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‘Sean?’ She is running down the front path, hugging her cardigan around her against the sudden cold. She is at the gate. ‘Sean?’
There is no one. She looks left and right. Both hands clenched white around the iron gate, she roars at the road like a madwoman. Opens the gate, runs into the middle of the street. Nothing. No one. If the door slams, she will be locked out. Her feet are freezing; the damp cold comes through her thin socks as she runs back into the house.
She stands in the hallway, willing herself to return to the living room. Her satchel is on the sofa. In it is her folder, the corner poking out. She pulls it free, flings it open. This time, she doesn’t have to leaf through the work. The anonymous sheet is on the top. It is not dialogue, but another poem. Typed. Blank paper. Someone must have delivered it by hand. Someone has been in this house.
Do not go blindly into that bright light
Do not go blindly into that bright light.
It is but glass with only tricks to play.
A mirror’s glare – beware! – you must take flight.
Wise girls they know that silver tongues do lie.
Those men are dogs, they hunt their prey by day.
Do not go blindly into that bright light.
Bad men may bark and they may surely bite,
Their only aim to lead young girls astray.
That mirror’s glare – beware! – you must take flight.
Farm beasts live better by a good darn sight
Than men who plant their seed and run away.
Do not go blindly into that bright light.
Oh woman, you must hold your baby tight.
You must take heed, please listen to me say:
The mirror’s glare – beware! – you must take flight
Yes, you, my dear, alone on this dark night,
Please heed another who has passed this way:
Do not go blindly into that bright light.
A mirror’s glare – beware! – you must take flight
She sinks to her knees. Reads it again, and again, the words and form at once strange and familiar. It’s a pastiche, she’s pretty sure, of the Dylan Thomas villanelle, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’.Dylan Thomas is Peter’s favourite poet. Peter told her once that he read that poem at his father’s funeral. Whoever wrote this must know that.
Sean was outside a second ago. Hemusthave put this here. It’s the only thing that makes sense. And yet it doesn’t; it doesn’t make any sense at all. Sean is too helpless. If it weren’t for the grubby anorak, she would want to hug him. If it was him outside just now, he must have broken in. But there’s no sign of that and … he can’t have written this, he just can’t. Unless … He’s so unsure of himself; easily startled. Could he have been browbeaten into delivering it for someone else?
Think, Samantha. The themes are the same as the others: bad men, danger, women, herself. Reggie? No, too kind, too old, too cool. Daphne, no – ditto, plus too twinkly and mischievous, too happy in her skin. Tommy, no, too out of it, too disinterested. Lana, no, she would never have this kind of grasp of English. Suzanne, no, she left school at sixteen, knows nothing of poetry let alone which poet to imitate. Which leaves Aisha and Jenny. Jenny who is intelligent and perhaps a little strident … but no. Aisha, then. It all loops back to Aisha, Peter’s jilted ex, Aisha the English graduate who casually dropped T. S. Eliot into her first simple poem.
She reads the poem again. Someone seems to be looking out for her, telling her to get away from Peter. Could this be Aisha’s long game? Unsettle with veiled menace, then point to Peter as the danger, causing her to become suspicious of him so that she, Aisha, can exploit that corrosive force in order to rekindle their affair?
Suspicion. The one per cent. One per cent is all you need.
She should call Aisha now. Right now. She should call her and ask her what the hell is going on.
An hour later, she is still on the sofa, reading the poem over and over. Torturing herself. The roar of Peter’s car on the drive.
